This is where you will configure the most important parts of your coppermine gallery. Some settings have an impact on the files you upload - changing those options after you have alreaded added a large number of files in your gallery can be a difficult undertaking. For this reason, it is important that you spend time with your coppermine setup at the early stages of gallery development to get those settings exactly the way you want them, before actually uploading too many pics or listing the gallery to the general public.
Most config option fields have a checkbox at the very right that allows you to reset that option to the default (or rather: recommended) option. This checkbox will only be displayed if your setting differs from the default or if there is no particular default setting (there can for example not be a default admin email address, as this entirely depends on your server setup).
Please note that the config page does not contain all coppermine options - some options are being assigned per group, so you will find them on the groups control panel.
Enter the name of your gallery in this text field. The name you enter will appear as the title that is displayed in the web browser's title bar and is also displayed in many of the different theme templates.
Even if you have removed the corresponding token from your custom theme, you should fill this in correctly, as it will be used when sending ecards and in all kinds of emails sent from your gallery (e.g. during registration).
It's mandatory to populate this field properly.
Example: Tim's incredible picture gallery
Enter a short description of your gallery in this text field. This description is also displayed in some of the theme templates just below the name of your gallery.
All emails sent by the gallery will be sent using this email address. This must be a valid email address.
Coppermine will use this address as "from"-address when sending emails (e.g. during registration). It's mandatory to have this email address populated properly. If you have your own domain, it might be a good idea to use an email account that correlates to your domain name.
Example: if your domain name is "example.com", you should create an email address named gallery@example.com and use that email address in coppermine's config. Coppermine does not create that email address for you!
Users sometimes ask on the support board if they can use another email, e.g. one from a fremail provider like gmail, hotmail or similar. The answer is: we can't tell you if your webhost will allow you to do this. Many webhosts disallow such things for reasons of spam prevention. If you're not sure, ask your webhost for support.
This is the URL where a user will be directed to when s/he clicks on the "See more pictures" link in an e-card. This must be the URL to the root of your coppermine installation followed by a forward slash (just the path to your coppermine folder, e.g. http://yourdomain.tld/coppermine/). Do not specify a specific file (such as index.php) or subfolder within the coppermine gallery in this field.
In previous versions of Coppermine, this field was called "Target address for the 'See more pictures' link in e-cards", but as this url is now being used for other functions in coppermine, it has been changed, appropriately.
It is absolutely that you enter the gallery URL setting properly - if you don't, you will almost certainly experience "funny" behaviours of your gallery.
This is the URL where a user will be directed when he clicks on the "Home" button in the main menu.
You can use "/" for the root of your domain, "index.php" for your gallery's default starting page, or any other valid URL. By default this is "index.php".
When enabled, users of your site may download files that they previously saved into their favorites collection. These files are dowloaded from the user's "My favorites" page and saved onto their computers in a zip-file format. This option requires zlib to be installed on your server (run phpinfo to check if this php library file exists on your server).
Warning: the creation of zip-archives on the server is a resources-intensive process that can overload your server pretty fast. In fact, the same server-sided limitations that apply to uploading (e.g. memory consumption) must be taken into account as well when enabling the zip download feature. It is very likely that this feature will stop working when trying to create a zip archive out of a larger number of entries in the visitor's "my favorites" meta album.
You have the options to disallow the zip-download of favorites completely or to allow it. If you choose to allow it, you can determine if you want a readme file to be included within the zip archive that explains where the archive has been downloaded from.
Default (and recommended) option is "off".
Specify the time zone difference between your local time and the time zone your webserver is in. This value will be used to adjust time stamps in ecards and other places.
Enables the display of help icons in various sections of the coppermine admin pages. When enabled, make sure you have also uploaded the "docs" folder into your coppermine folder on your webserver.
If you choose to set this to "Yes: everyone", logged in (registered) users will be able to see the help icons in strategic locations as well, e.g. when creating a user gallery.
As the help text is based on the documentation that comes with coppermine, it is not available in all languages. If the native language of your user(s) is not among the number of translated documentations, it is advisable to set this option to "Yes: admin only" to avoid confusion among your users.
It is strongly recommended that you do not disable the help icons altogether: even though you feel that you know your way around in your Coppermine install, the help icons might help you with the functions of a new or unfamiliar option later.
When enabled, a list of all keywords entered in the "Edit files" page will appear at the bottom of the search page, with each keyword being a clickable search link. Enabling this option is recommended only if you have a small number of keywords in use (e.g. less than 100) - it will provide your users with some ideas as to what they could be searching for in your gallery (in addition to the standard full-text search). Please note that enabling this option for a large list of keywords (e.g. thousands of keywords) can slow down the search page considerably and may be confusing for new users and visitors to your site.
Enable or disable plugins, with a link to the plugin manager. This feature allows advanced copperminers to create plug-ins that can control the way coppermine looks and behaves without modifying the inherent code of the script itself. There are many exciting, user-contributed, plug-ins available on the Coppermine forum. More details can be found in the plugins section of this documentation. Since plugins add on to the core Coppermine system, if you are having problems, try to disable all plugins using this setting to see if a plugin may be at fault. If so, you can then enable all plugins here, then uninstall or install one plugin at a time in the plugin manager to figure out which one is at fault.
When batch-adding files (that you have uploaded using a FTP before) to your gallery, you have the option to switch between a browsable list, where you can go scroll through the directory structure in your albums-folder or to display the whole directory structure at once. Enable this option if you have a larger structure of directories and subdirectories you want to browse through (this requires your browser to be capable of displaying iframes). Set this option to "No" (disabled) if you want to use the "classic" coppermine interface that shows a complete list of the structure at once.
Should you have difficulties using one, try the other. You can toggle between these options on the batch-add page as well.
When enabled, preview thumbnails are being displayed on the batch-add screen. The preview thumbnails are good to figure out what files to actually add to an album when batch-adding files. If you always add all files within a folder to an album anyway, it's safe to turn this feature off, which will lead to faster page loads of the batch-add screen. This feature will not safe webspace nor does it have an impact on the thumbnail creation - it just boosts the batch-add screen, that's all.
You can toggle between these options (enabled or disabled) on the batch-add page as well.
When starting with your gallery, you should leave this option enabled until you're convinced that batch-adding works as expected. You can then turn this option off. If you later discover that something goes wrong with your uploads, re-enable this feature once more.
This the the config section where you can set up the language settings. Make sure to read this section carefully before changing anything here.
This sets the default language for your gallery. All language files are stored in the lang directory on your server.
Languages and internationalization (often refered to as i18n) is a complicated and complex thing. You (as Coppermine admin) probably don't want to go into details, so this documentation skips the in-depth issues existing with i18n and just gives you an overview how Coppermine handles languages:
By default, language files are unicode encoded files. If you set "Character encoding" to "Unicode (utf-8)" then the script will auto detect the preferred language of your visitors based on what default language is configured in their browsers. If the corresponding language is available in your language directory, it will be used. Otherwise, the default language file will be used.
When the script auto detects the preferred language, it stores the result in a cookie on the visitor's computer. To reset this cookie (and thus force the script to do another auto detection) the user must call this autodetect function with something like: http://yoursite.com/coppermine_dir/index.php?lang=xxx
These steps are performed by the script:
Enable this option if you're using language files that haven't been created for the Coppermine version you use, but for an earlier version. If a certain word or phrase doesn't exist within your language file, coppermine will display the equivalent english phrase, instead.
This feature has been introduced to allow the use of previous version language files -- language files that may have not been translated for the this version, yet. Until an updated version of the language file is made available, you can use this option. Most translation differences affect the admin part of coppermine only, so the admin will experience most of these untranslated strings. The admin will see some phrases in english instead of his/her preferred language for strings and words that don't exist in the currently available language file. NOTE: this fallback option only works for 95% of all phrases, there may still be some other translation omissions.
Enabling this option can have a huge impact on the overall performance of your gallery, especially the memory usage (RAM) may increase drastically. It is recommended to only enable this option if you must have it, not just out of curiosity or to enable as many features as possible.
This should normally be set to "Unicode (utf-8)" (or "Default (language file)"). See the explanation in the "language" section of this documentation.
Don't change this from Unicode to anything else if you're not absolutely sure about the impact this will have!
Once you have added comments or files to your gallery, you should not change the character set of your gallery. If you do so, non-ASCII characters may not display properly.
Enable this option if you want your users to be able to select a preferred language from a dropdown list (you can specify to display only the list itself or a label saying "Choose your language:" in front of the list). Edit your template file (/themes/yourtheme/template.html) to specify where the language dropdown list should appear on your gallery (look for the call tag: {LANGUAGE_SELECT_LIST}).
To remove languages from this list, use your FTP application to delete all unneeded langauge files from the lang folder. Coppermine will populate the list of available languages based on the files that reside in the lang folder. Do not remove english.php from the lang folder.
Usually, you don't have to display the list of available languages, as the menus will be displayed in the prefered language of your visitors anyway. Recommended setting is "off".
Enable this option if you would like the option of having your users select languages appropriate for their use by merely clicking on a flag icon which representing their language or country (you can specify to display the flags themselves or include a label that states: "Choose your language:" in front of the flags). Edit your template file (/themes/yourtheme/template.html) to specify where the flags should appear in your gallery (look for the call tag: {LANGUAGE_SELECT_FLAGS}).
To remove languages from this list, use your FTP application to delete all unneeded langauge files from the lang folder. Coppermine will populate the list of available languages based on the files that reside in the lang folder. Do not remove english.php from the lang folder.
Usually, you don't have to display the list of available languages, as the menus will be displayed in the prefered language of your visitors anyway. Recommended setting is "off".
This option only applies only if you enabled user language selection - it will show a "default"-icon or list entry to let the users go back to the original language of your gallery.
Use this dropdown list to select the default theme for your gallery (Themes are stored in sub-directories of the themes directory ).
Enable this option if you want your users to be able to select other themes from a dropdown list (you can specify to display only the list itself or a label saying "Choose your theme:" in front of the list). Edit your template file (/themes/yourtheme/template.html) to specify where the theme dropdown list should appear on your gallery (look for {THEME_SELECT_LIST}).
This option only makes sense if you have at least one alternative theme in your /themes/ folder other than your default theme. We recommend using this option only if there's are additional benefits for the user (for example a theme with less graphics in it that loads faster for users on a dial-up connection, or a theme with reduced color pallettes and good contrast). Recommended setting: off.
This option applies only if you enabled the user theme selection option - it will show a "default" list entry to let the users go back to the original theme of your gallery.
Determines wether a sidebar for browsers will be available for members of the admin group, registered users group and guest group.
The sidebar is a minimalistic interface to control your coppermine-driven gallery. Think of it as a sort of snap-in for your favorite browser. If you enabled the sidebar, the control structure of your gallery (with all categories/subcategories and albums) will be available in a separate panel in the browser for faster navigation.
It is recommended that you try this option first for the admin only: play with it and decide if it would be a helpfull feature for your site's visitors. If yes, enable/promote the sidebar for the registered users and/or guests as well. It's up to you if you want to promote the usage of the sidebar by displaying a link to it in coppermine's menu or if you want to promote it by some other mechanism (e.g. by telling your users about it on a non-coppermine driven page of your website).
The sidebar is helpfull for users who return to your page often. It provides an alternative method of browsing your gallery by displaying a tree structure of your categories, subcategories and albums. It is meant for advanced users who understand how their browser works.
The sidebar install screen tries to auto-detect the operating system and browser that the visitor is using and offers the corresponding option to install the sidebar (as those methods differ from browser to browser). Some browsers are capable so to pose as different browsers, which will make the auto-detection routine fail. Subsequently, there is an option on the install screen as well to skip auto-detection and make the visitor select his browser.
Group membership is being determined if a visitor is logged in or not: if he is not logged in, he is a member of the guest group and the corresponding option set up for guests (anonymous) is being taken into account. If the visitor is logged in, he is automatically a member of the registered group.
There are two independant config sections for granular permissions who can access the sidebar:
Members of the admin group can access the sidebar no matter what option you select.
Possible options for each of the above settings:
Make sure to set the sidebar options up so that they make sense: it is not a bright idea to allow guests to access the sidebar, but deny access to registered users; registered users would be "punished" for registering. It is advisable to test the sidebar feature thoroughly before allowing your visitors to access it.
How the sidebar is installed greatly differs from browser to browser. Sadly, the most complicated version is the sidebar for Internet Explorer, which is the most popular browser. In the past, it has been comparatively easy to add anything to IE's favorites and to come up with a "real" sidebar. However, as Microsoft had some bad press for releasing a browser with severe security holes, the options for developers to create a working sidebar that end users can add easily have been reduced deliberately by Microsoft when releasing patches for their browser and operating system. Therefor, you might have issues with the sidebar, depending on which version of Windows and IE you are using.
If you want to edit the text that explains the install of the sidebar, edit the file http://yoursite.tld/your_coppermine_folder/lang/yourlanguage.php with a plain text editor.
Use this if you want to create a custom link that will appear in the menu. What you enter here will be the name of the menu link or button. Leave space blank if you do not have any specific use for it.
This is the URL where the user's browser will be directed to when s/he clicks on the "Custom link name" button in the main menu.
You can use any valid URL.
Leave this blank if you do not have any specific use for it.
When enabled, this option will display icons next to some menu items to allow an easier navigation. The performance penalty should be neglectible. Default (and recommended) option is "on".
When enabled, this will display the bulletin board codes that may be used in description fields to help with the formatting of text, images and links.
If at least one entry is selected, an icon will display on all gallery pages that allows site visitors to add the page they are on quickly to their favorite social bookmark service. You have to understand that displaying those icons does not automatically add links to your gallery: it just offers the visitor an easy way to bookmark your site. Displaying the social bookmarks section will not have a direct impact on your page rank, as the social bookmarks section is being written on the page using JavaScript (which search engine spiders will ignore). However, if users like your gallery and bookmark it using their favorite social bookmarking services, you will get back links from those social bookmark services which will increase your site's relevance in search engine catalogs. This being said: social bookmarks can be a legitimate tool to improve your search engine rank. As a disadvantage, the icons may distract visitors from the actual content of your site and lead them somewhere else. Therefor, you should consider carefully if you want to display social bookmark links and if the majority of visitors of your page will understand and use the social bookmark icons. The social bookmark icons may be beneficial for gallery owners with a target audience that is widely familiar with social bookmarks. If you (as site admin) have no idea what those icons are for, you better leave them turned off (which is the default).
Consider carefully what social bookmark services you will display on your page - it's advisable not to display all that are available: this would only clutter the look of your page and disctract users too much. It would be confusing for users to actually find the icon of their favorite social bookmark site. There are many localized social bookmark services, so they are only usefull if your site visitors actually speak the language the bookmark service is providing.
To avoid spamming, most social bookmark services only allow bookmarks from registered users, so you can't expect that your site visitors will go through the registration process on all those services - they will probably only use the service they have already signed up for. That's why it's probably a good idea to only present a small number of those icons that are well-known in the community you catter for.
The social bookmark selector on the config page is using a select field where you can highlight multiple entries by holding down the [CTRL]-key on your keyboard (on PC clients). Use that key as well to unselect entries - if you just click on an entry without holding down the [Ctrl]-key, the item will be selected; re-clicking will not un-select it, so you will have to use the [Ctrl]-key if you want to disable the display of social bookmarks after having enabled it once.
This feature will only work if your theme contains the social bookmarks placeholder.
Optional relative path to a custom header file. Using this option, you can include non-coppermine code bits to be included into your theme, e.g. an overall navigation that gets included on your whole website. You can only add a relative path (seen from the root path of your coppermine install) - not an absolute one, nor a http include from another website. This option is only meant for experienced users who have some PHP know-how.
Warning: you mustn't include full html pages that contain an html header or footer (tags like <head> or <body>), nor can the included file do file header manipulation, e.g. reading another (non-coppermine) cookie.
For details on the include files, refer to the section Custom header and footer
Example: If your Coppermine install resides in http://yourdomain.tld/your_coppermine_folder/ and your include file is suppossed to be http://yourdomain.tld/my_overall_navigation/my_custom_header.php, you need to specify ../my_overall_navigation/my_custom_header.php (the relative path to your include file, seen from the folder coppermine resides in) as "Path to custom header include".
Optional relative path to a custom footer file. The same remarks apply as for the custom header include path.
When enabled, another link in the sub_menu will appear named "By Date". When the user clicks on it, the calendar will open in a pop-up and will allow the user to view files uploaded at a certain date.
When enabled, there will be pages that tell the user if his action has been successfull or not, with a link to continue to the next page. If disabled, the user will be redirected to the target page immediately without displaying the redirection page first, with the message displaying at the top of the page instead. Recommended (and default) setting is "No", as it then will need less clicks.
Example: if enabled, users will be sent to a page that says "comment added" after they have submit a comment. Only after clicking on continue they will be sent back to the intermediate image display (where they posted their comment in the first place). If this option stays disabled, the user will see a box at the top of the intermediate image screen that just says "comment added" after he submit his comment.
When enabled, there will be section on the upload screen that is meant to make your visitors aware of the fact that they can upload as well using the XP Publishing Wizard. The link will be displayed regardless of a user's permission to upload in the first place, so make sure to only display the promotional link if your users can actually use the publishing wizard in the first place.
The number you type in here becomes the default width of the display tables used on your main page or when you are viewing thumbnails of an album. You can enter the width in pixels or specify it in percentages. The default value is 100%.
Setting this to a ridiculously high value (i.e. above 100% or a pixel value higher than regular desktop resolutions) doesn't make sense and will lead to unexpected results.
The default value is 2. With this value the script will display the current categories plus one level of sub-categories.
This is the number of albums to display on a page. If the current category contains more albums than what is allowed on the page, the album list will be split over multiple pages with tabs at the bottom of each album list table (pagination) that users can click on to advance to the next set of albums in a particular category.
Default (and recommended) setting is "12".
Self-explanatory. The default value is 2.
This sets the maximum size of the thumbnails that are to be displayed for each album. 50 means that the thumbnail will fit inside a square of 50x50 pixels.
If the size you specify there is larger than "Pictures and thumbnails settings/Max width or height of a thumbnail", the thumbnail will be stretched. Aesthetically, it is better to have thumbnails smaller than or equal to the Max width or height settings here.
This option allows you to change the content of the main page displayed by the script.
The default value is catlist/alblist/random,2/lastup,2
You can use the following "codes" to include other items:
Unless you really know what you are doing you should always keep catlist and alblist in "the content of the main page", as they make up the core parts of the index page or any gallery site, for that matter.
The ,2 dictates that cpg should display 2 rows of thumbnails.
Some example configurations:
Use this setting to choose whether or not to display thumbnails from the first album of the categories listed on the default gallery entry page.
By default, this option is enabled. If your gallery grows and you get a larger number of categories, you might want to disable this option to make the index page look less cluttered.
Enabling this option will have the advantage that your visitors will need less clicks to reach the page that contains the pics they want to see. Drawback of this option is that your index page may look cluttered and will burn more resouces (CPU cycles), so you should disable this if you have issues with resources consumption.
You can dictate that coppermine sort all categories alphabetically (instead of in a custom order) by setting "Sort categories alphabetically" to "Yes". This setting is accessible both in the coppermine config menu and in the category manager. If you enable alphabetical sorting, the up and down arrows that normally let you move categories up and down in the custom sorting list will disappear.
If you use album keywords to display images/files in more than one album, enabling this option will display additional information for the album stats: if an album doesn't only contain "regular" files, but files linked via the "album keyword" option as well, the number of linked files will be displayed separately like this "3 files, last one added on Oct 07, 2004, 3 linked files, 6 files total".
Default value is 4 this means that each row will show 4 thumbnails. There can be no general recommendation on the number of thumbnail columns you should use, as the optimal setting depends on your thumbnail width setting, the theme you use, the width of the main table and especially the display resolution of your site visitor.
Default value is 3.
If an album contains more files than the number that will fit on one thumbnail page ("Number of columns on thumbnail page" x "Number of rows on thumbnail page"), a pagination tab will be displayed that allows the visitor to jump to the next page of thumbnails.
When the thumbnails spread over multiple pages, tabs are displayed at the bottom of the page. This value define how many tabs will be displayed. If the number of thumbnail pages is greater than the number set for "Maximum number of tabs to display", the "neighbouring" tabs will be displayed as well as the first and last tab.
Default is 12, range is between 5 and 25.
Toggles whether the file caption is displayed below each thumbnail while user is in (regular) thumbnail view.
Toggles whether the number of views is displayed below each thumbnail while user is in thumbnail view.
Toggles the display of the number of comments for below each thumbnail.
Toggles the display of the name of non-admin uploaders below each thumbnail.
Toggles the display of admin uploader names below each thumbnail for users that have the administrators group set as thier default group.
Toggles the display of the file name below each thumbnail.
It's recommended to leave this option disabled, especially if you have no direct control over the file names (because you allow uploads by users). Better use the actual textual content (title and caption) features. If you have long file names that can not be wrapped, the file name displayed may be wider than the thumbnail, so the table cell that wraps the thumbnail and all text that relates to it may get much wider than expected, resulting in a distorted view of the table.
Toggles the display of the rating results below each thumbnail.
Recommended (and default) setting is "off".
When enabled, this option sends the visitor directly from the thumbnail to the full-sized image pop-up, skipping the display of intermediate images.
It is not recommended to enable this option, becauseThis option has been added because a lot of coppermine users have asked for it. However, the dev team does not recommend using it.
This option determines the default order in which thumbnails should be displayed. Your user can override this by selecting a custom sort order from the sort buttons above the albums.
Used to determine how many votes a file must receive before appearing as a "top-rated file.". If a file has received less than "this value" of votes, it will not be displayed in the "top-rated" page. This value must be greater or equal to 1.
Setting this to a high number is only recommended for busy sites with a lot of visitors. Default value is "1". A higher number has the advantage that votes just by one individual won't boost up the relevance of a file to much, reducing potential rating fraud.
The minimum width of the table (in pixels or %) that will be used to display the intermediate picture.
Examples:
Recommended setting is "100%". When setting this to a value that doesn't make sense (over 100% or a silly absolute size in pixels), your gallery pages will look distorted and horizontal scrollbars will appear.
If you decide to use an absolute size in pixels, make sure that the value is equal or greater than "Max width or height of an intermediate picture".
Define whether or not the file information block that appears below the intermediate image should be visible by default (If turned off, users can still view the info block by clicking on the ( i ) button.
Default setting: off. Recommended setting: on.
When enabled, a link will be displayed in the pic info section (that can be toggled by clicking the (i) button) that allows the visitor to download a movie. If the file displayed is not a movie, but another file type (e.g. an image), the download link will not be displayed.
Maximum number of characters that an image description may contain.
Toggles display of a "film strip" showing thumbnails of prior and subsequent files in the album.
Toggles the display of the file name below each thumbnail in the film strip.
It's recommended to leave this option disabled, especially if you have no direct control over the file names (because you allow uploads by users). If you have long file names that can not be wrapped, the file name displayed may be wider than the thumbnail, so the table cell that wraps the thumbnail and the file name may get much wider than expected, resulting in a distorted view of the table and subsequently make the filmstrip feature unusable.
Sets the number of thumbnails to display in film strip. The number you can set here is dependent on your thumbnail size and monitor size. If you do not want to inconvenience users with smaller monitors set this value between 3-7.
It's recommended to use an odd number, so the thumbnail that represents the file actually viewed is being displayed in the center of the film strip. Default (and recommended) setting is 5.
This sets the time that each pic is to be displayed (transition interval) when a user is viewing a slideshow (the next pic is being loaded/cached while the current one is being displayed). This setting must be in milliseconds (1 second = 1000 milliseconds).
Remember that setting this to a very low value may not be in the best interest for all of your users, especially those who are on dial-up connections, or if you have large files (kb) that may take longer than the allotted time to display.
When enabled, the hit counter will increase when a visitor views the slideshow as well. When disabled, the hit counter will only be increased if visitors browse your gallery using the regular navigation. This option may have a slight performance impact, don't enable it when your gallery is slow already.
When enabled, you can not only send images as ecards, but flash files as well. This feature has been added because many users requested it. However, it is not recommended at all, simply because most email clients will not display Flash embedded into emails or (even worse) will show messages that may confuse the recipient.
You have to understand that this setting does not determine the ability of users to send ecards in the first place (this is being configured on the groups page instead). Only if a user is allowed to send ecards (i.e. belongs to a group that is allowed to do so), this setting is being taken into account.
When enabled, a transparent gif will be inserted "over" the pics displayed in your gallery (intermediate sized and full-size pics). Subsequently, if a user right-clicks the image and uses the "save as..." context menu of his browser, only the transparent gif will be saved on his PC, but not the actual image he tried to save. This option will reduce the number of users who are capable to steal your images, but it will only fool newbie users. There is no effective method to completely avoid image theft, but the transparent overlay method is much better than any no-right-click script that keeps users from the legitimate use of the right mouse button and subsequently makes them shy away. Please note that the transparent overlay is being added by using the deprecated HTML attribute "background" to avoid the context menu entry "save background image" that would appear if the overlay image was added using standards-compliant CSS methods. Subsequently, your pages will not contain valid, standards-compliant HTML output if this option is enabled.
Recommended (and default) setting for this option is "off".
If you want to use the old rating system instead of the new one, you have to check this option.
This will not allow you to set a custom amount of rating stars as it defaults back to 5
Used to determine on what scale users will be able to vote. The number you set here will set the amount of rating-stars on the thumbnail page.
Remove "bad words" from comments. The "bad words" list is in the language file. NOTE: Not all language files may contain an equivelent for this list.
Toggle the use of smilies in comments.
This setting toggles flood protection for the comments option. When set to YES, a user can post another comment, even though he already posted a previous one. Some users may abuse this setting. The recommended setting is: NO.
This is designed to prevent someone from breaking the flow of your gallery layout by posting lengthy comments without using spaces between words. With this default value, "words" that longer than 38 characters are automatically censored.
Prevent a comment for containing too many "new line" characters (enter key).
Maximum number of characters that a comment may contain.
Toggle if you want to receive an email each time a comment is being posted. Warning: only enable this option on sites with very low user traffic or you may soon find yourself flooded with notification emails.
Changes the sorting order of comments made to a file.
Ascending: latest comment at the bottom, oldest comment at the top
Descending: latest comment at the top, oldest comment at the bottom
If you allowed anonymous comments (permissions set on the groups control panel), this prefix will be used for comments left by unregistered users. This can be helpful in preventing and identifing unregistered users posing as other registered users (or even an admininstrators) when leaving comments. Leave this blank if you do not want a prefix for guest's comments.
By default, comments don't require approval and are visible instantly. To fight the problem of comment spamming, you can require admin approval of comments posted by users. Comments will then not be visible instantly, but only after admin approval on the review comments screen. If you don't allow comments at all, this setting won't apply, so you can leave it as-is.
Options:
Please note:
With this toggle you can determine if the admin will see only the comments that actually need approval on the "Review Comments" page. You can toggle this option in config or on the actual "Review Comments" page - it won't hurt to toggle this setting frequently when reviewing comments.
This option does not have any impact on the visibility of comments, but only on the "Review Comments" page display.
When enabled, the non-admin end user will see a placeholder text saying Someone has posted a comment here. It will be visible after admin approval. instead of the comment. When disabled, the comment that needs approval will be completely invisible for the end user.
This setting is only being taken into account for non-admin users, so you won't notice any difference when being logged in as admin.
When enabled, users are allowed to edit or delete their comments after submitting them.
Note: this setting doesn't determine if users can actually post comments at all (this is instead being determined on the groups page). Instead, it just displays an edit and delete icon next to a comment that turns the comment into an input field when being clicked.
The admin is not affected at all - he can edit any comment no matter what.
To prevent spam comments being posted by bots (automated scripts), this toggle will display an image next to the comment field with some random letters on it. The visitor is required to enter those letters into a textfield to prove that he's actually a human and not just some dumb bot that drops spam. It's recommended to enable Captchas for anonymous comments (guests who are not logged in).
Note: this setting doesn't determine if guests can actually post comments at all (this is instead being determined on the groups page).
Captchas will only work if GD2 is available on your server with FreeType support enabled.
Another method to fight comment spam is the option to filter all comments posted using Akismet. To use this feature, you need a valid Akismet API key. To get such a key, you need to sign up (for free) for small/non-profit pages on the Wordpress page to obtain an API key. If you plan to use Akismet on a commercial page, you need to purchase a professional API key on akismet.com/commercial/
After you got your API key by email you can paste it into this config field. You can not make up the API key, nor can you use someone else's API key, is it is bound to be used only for the particular domain it has been registered for in the first place.
Leaving this field empty will disable the usage of Akismet.
Please understand that the Coppermine group is not affiliated in any way to Akismet.com nor Wordpress: the Akismet service is provided by a third party. Terms and conditions of Akismet usage may change at a later stage - the Coppermine dev team doesn't have control over this service and can not be held liable in case something goes wrong in relation to Akismet. The Coppermine dev team just provides an interface within the application's code to allow you to process comments through Akismet.
Please do not ask questions how to get an API key on the Coppermine support board: both the Wordpress pages as well as Akismet.com provide documentation how to obtain an API key. Go to those pages to get your API key.
These options will only be taken into account if you have entered a valid Akismet API key into the corresponding config field. It determines what should be done if Akismet rejects a comment as spam? Here's what the options do:
When enabled, an explanation will appear at the bottom of the comment section for anonymous users (guests) that explains that they need to log in if they want to post comments. This is meant to promote registration, to explain to your site's visitors that they could interact even more if they registered.
Of course this message will only be displayed if you have disallowed guests to post comments in the first place (you do so on the group control panel). However, this switch does not take into account if there actually is a user group that is actually allowed to post comments at all, i.e. wether you have configured registered users to post comments. If you don't allow registered users to post comments, then don't enable this option.
Settings that determine if the contact-form is available. Make sure that sending emails from Coppermine works in the first place before enabling the contact form.
Toggles wether the link to the contact form will be displayed in the menu and wether guests (visitors of your gallery who are not logged in) can use the contact form.
Possible options:
If disabled, the below options that apply to guests using the contact form will not be taken into account.
When enabled, the visitor (guest) using the contact form will be allowed to enter his name.
Possible options:
When enabled, the visitor (guest) using the contact form will be allowed to enter his email address.
Possible options:
Toggles wether the link to the contact form will be displayed in the menu for registered users and wether your users (visitors of your gallery who are logged in) can use the contact form.
Possible options:
Subject line for the emails generated by the contact form. Will be put in front of the custom subject line the user can enter (if "Display subject field" is enabled).
When enabled, the visitor (guest or registered user) using the contact form will be allowed to enter a subject line.
Possible options:
When enabled, the sender's email address will be used to send the email (if applicable, i.e. if a valid email exists). This is helpfull in terms of comfort, as you can use your email app's reply functionality. The drawback may be issues with the emails not being delivered properly, as you can't be sure that the user has entered his actual email address. Additionally, your webserver's mail server may be configured to only allow ceratin email addresses in the from field. Anti-spam mechanisms may be in place that validate the domain part of the from-field and only accept emails when the domains of the mail server and the from field match. Subsequently, use this option with care and test it througly before making using it "live".
Recommended (fail-safe) setting is "off".
Sets the maximum allowable size in pixels for the specified dimension of your thumbnails.
When changing this setting, only files that are added after the change will be affected. Therefore, it is advisable that this setting not be changed after photos have already been added to the gallery. You can, however, apply the changes to the existing pictures with the "admin tools (resize pictures)" utility from the admin menu.
Sets the dimension (height or width) on which the maximum pixel size limitation should apply to.
When changing this setting, only files that are added after the change will be affected. Therefore, it is advisable that this setting not be changed after photos have already been added to the gallery. You can, however, apply the changes to the existing pictures with the "admin tools (resize pictures)" utility from the admin menu.
This prefix is added to the file name of created thumbnails.
These setting mustn't be changed if you already have files in your database. If you do, all reference to your existing files will become invalid.
It's recommended to leave the setting as is (thumb_) if you're not absolutely sure what you're doing.
This feature is deprecated in cpg1.5.x or better and can no longer be configured, since it only lead to end user confusion. If you performed a fresh install or if you have never changed this prefix, the option won't show through. Only for those who have actually changed this option and have a config setting that differs from the default prefix, the text field will show at all. If this is the case for you: you're strongly encouraged to change this back to the default value to avoid possible issues in future versions.
Bottom line: don't be alarmed if this option doesn't show for you - that's OK.
The quality used for JPEG compression when the script resizes an image. Values can range from 0 (worst) to 100 (best). By default this value is set to 80. This value can be set to 75 when using ImageMagick.
Do not change this setting unless you really know what you're doing. Other settings for thumbnail and intermediate pic (dimensions) may have a significant and undesireable impact on filesizes and image quality.
By default, whenever you upload a file, the script creates both a thumbnail of the file (file name using "thumb_" as its prefix) and an intermediate version of the file(file name using "normal_" as its prefix). If you set this option to NO, the intermediate file will not be created. This will keep Coppermine from creating intermediate-sized pics during the upload process, displaying the full-sized picture even on the intermediate-display page (resizing the full-sized image on that screen using the width and height attributes of the <img>-tag) to the size that you have specified for "Max width or height of an intermediate picture". Setting this option to "no" will save webspace but may result in increased loading times for the intermediate image display screen.
The intermediate pictures are those that appears when you click on a thumbnail. The default value is 400, it means that the intermediate picture will be created to fit inside a square of 400x400 pixels. NOTE: Currently, 33% of your users have monitors set at 800 pixels wide, another 33% have their settings at 1024 pixels, the rest have settings less than or greater than these two numbers. Therefore a setting of 600 or less would fit the screens of most users. Keep in mind,however, that setting this size larger than 400 impacts the file size of your intermediate pictures and the time it takes to download and display on slower connections.
If you disable the creation of intermediate images, the value specified for "Max width or height of an intermediate picture" will still have an impact: the full-size image will then be resized using the width and height attributes of the <img>-tag on the intermediate image display pages (displayimage.php), resizing the full-size pic that way to fit on the page.
Any file with a file size larger than this value will be rejected by the coppermine script. Setting this option to a higher value than what is actually supported by your webserver will only result in "funny" webserver error messages in lieu of "regular" coppermine error messages. Therefore, it is recommended that you set this value to a size that is slightly lower or equal to the max file size that your server is set to handle. The actual size your server can handle cannot be determined by Coppermine (or any PHP script) - when in doubt, contact your webhost.
Prior to an FTP upload of files, it is recommended that the admin use their imaging software to resize (individually or by batch processing) larger files to a more practical size. This will facilitate the FTP process and the creation of intermediate pictures and thumbnails.
Limits the height and width dimensions of the pictures that are uploaded. Resizing large pictures requires a lot of memory and consumes CPU resources. As a result, there are usually limitations that have been set by your webserver (host) regarding the maximum uploadable file sizes - you cannot set this value to one that is higher than what is actually supported by your webserver. Contact your webhost/server if you are not sure about your site's file size limitations. (Ideally, users will resize their pictures to a more manageable size prior to attempting any uploads). Determine what you would like the maximum size for a full size pic should be (dpi and dimensions, while keeping in mind the screen size of your users) and use that as a recommended standard for FTP and user HTTP uploads. Inform your users of this recommended size constraints.)
During the upload process, if images are larger than the maximum width or height allowed they will automatically be resized to the maximum allowable size. Users with especially large files should be advised to resize their pictures outside of coppermine before uploading as this process also consumes considerable resources when processed online.
Note: How the image is resized (width/height/max aspect) is set in the admin option "Use dimension (width or height or Max aspect for thumbnail)"
There are three options:
This setting is used to determine the width of a full-size pop-up, as most major browsers mysteriously add some padding to pics opened in a pop-up. It's recommended to leave this set to the default 5 pixels unless you know what you're doing.
This setting is used to determine the height of a full-size pop-up, as most major browsers mysteriously add some padding to pics opened in a pop-up. It's recommended to leave this set to the default 3 pixels unless you know what you're doing.
If set to YES then your gallery can contain albums that are visible only to users that belong to a specified group. This is ideal for creating albums that contain files that you want accessible to only a select group of people. You could also create a userID and password and inform specific users/customers of the ID and password needed to view these files.
If a user is a member of a group that can have its own gallery and this option is turned on then this user will have the permission to hide any of his/her albums from other users.
This option does not determine whether users can have personal galleries at all, nor does it determine who is allowed to upload and who is not (these settings are accessible in the groups manager). You should only set this option to NO if you really know what you're doing (by default, it is set to YES).
Note: if you switch from 'yes' to 'no' all currently private albums will become public! Do not set this option to 'no' unless you understand what this option actually does!
Toggles the display of the private album icons to unlogged users.
Set to 'NO', the album is completely hidden from unauthorised users.
Set to 'YES', the album name, description and statistics are shown, but not the thumbnails or files contained within.
It is recommended to enable this option especially if you want to encourage visitors to register (this does of course only make sense if you allow registered users to see albums that guests are not allowed to see).
When the filename of a file that is uploaded contains any one or more of these characters, the characters will be replaced with an underscore.
Don't change this unless you know exactly what you are doing. Default value is $/\:*?"'<>|` &#@
A significant number of webhosts on the Internet run PHP in safe mode. Coppermine runs without any problem in safe mode and with the "open basedir restriction" active, provided safe mode is properly configured. Unfortunately, on many hosts, safe mode is not configured properly.
If you have issues uploading pics, find out if safe_mode is enabled on your webserver by searching for it on your phpinfo page (go to admin tools -> phpinfo). If safe_mode is enabled there, coppermine might be able to workaround the misconfiguration of your server if you enable coppermine's "silly safe mode" option.
What "silly safe mode" does: if you enable this option, Coppermine will not try to create sub-folders for each user, but upload all files into the root of the userpics folder. There might be a slight performance impact for larger galleries, but then you probably won't be running a large gallery on a "crippled" webserver that is not configured properly.
Before playing with the silly safe mode option, make sure that you have set permissions on the albums folder and everything within it as suggested.
Don't change this if uploading works just fine for you.
Enter the allowed image file types that your image library (GD or ImageMagick) is capable of handling to be allowed as uploads and content in your gallery. Restrict the allowed file types to certain types only by entering a slash-separated list of extensions, e.g. jpg/bmp/tif (only possible if you use ImageMagick) or jpg/png (possible both for Image Magick as well as GD).
You have to understand that you can not specify "all image file types that exist", but instead "all image file types that your image library (GD or ImageMagick) supports.
Specify the allowed movie file types to be uploaded. If you want to restrict the allowable file types to certain extensions only, enter a slash-separated list of extensions, e.g. wmv/avi/mov.
Note that being able to display a movie requires that the cpg-user have the necessary codecs properly configured on their computers to display the movie file, e.g. if you allow the file type mov, the user who wishes to view the file will need to have Apple's Quick-Time plug-in installed. Also note that avi is just a container for different codecs - this means that a computer which is capable of playing movie1.avi may not be capable of playing movie2.avi if those files have been encoded with different 'avi' codecs.
File types supported by Coppermine:
asf/asx/mpg/mpeg/wmv/swf/avi/mov
In Coppermine versions prior to cpg1.5.0, the option "ALL" used to be available as well for this field - it has been removed, as it caused users to think that this actually meant "all movie file types that exist".
If set to YES, movies will instantly start playing when loaded (has no affect on flash files, however). Nothing will happen if the user does not have the necessary codecs installed on their computer. This option is browser-dependant, so there is no guarantee that it will work on all platforms.
Specify the allowable audio file types to be uploaded. If you want to restrict the allowed file types to certain extensions only, enter a slash-separated list of extensions, e.g. wav/mp3/wma.
Note that being able to listen to an audio file requires that the cpg-user have the necessary codecs properly configured on their computers to hear these files, e.g. if you allow the file type mp3, users who wish to listen to the file will need to have a media player installed on their computer that can handle mp3 files.
File types supported by Coppermine:
mp3/midi/mid/wma/wav/ogg
In Coppermine versions prior to cpg1.5.0, the option "ALL" used to be available as well for this field - it has been removed, as it caused users to think that this actually meant "all sound file types that exist".
Specify the allowable document file types to be uploaded. If you want to restrict the allowable file types to certain extensions only, enter a slash-separated list of extensions, e.g. txt/pdf.
Note that being able to browse a document file requires the cpg-user to have a compatible software installed and configured properly on their computer that is capable of displaying the type of document in question, e.g. if you allow the file type xls, users who wish to browse the file will need to have an application installed on their computer that can display MS-Excel sheets. Be extremely careful with documents that are known to be vulnerable to virus contamination, embedded or as macros. This is especially true if you plan to allow users the capability of uploading documents without admin approval.
File types supported by Coppermine:
Real-Media-files: ram/ra/rm
Images: tiff/tif
MS Office: doc/xls/pps/ppt/mdb/accdb/accde/accde/accdr/accdt/docm/docx/dotm/dotx/grv/gsa/one/onepkg/ost/potm/potx/ppam/ppsm/ppsx/pptm/pptx/pub/xlam/xlsb/xlsm/xlsx/xltm/xltx/xsf/xsn
Misc: txt/rtf/pdf
Archives: zip/rar/gz/001/7z/arj/bz2/cab/lzh/rpm/tar/z
OpenDocument (OpenOffice 2.x): odt/ods/odp/odg/odc/odf/odi/odm/ott/ots/otp/otg/otc/otf/oti/oth
OpenOffice 1.x / StarOffice 6.x: sxw/stw/sxc/stc/sxd/std/sxi/sti/sxg/sxm
For security reasons coppermine doesn't enable all document types by default. Before adding more file types, make sure that the file types are supported on your webserver.
In Coppermine versions prior to cpg1.5.0, the option "ALL" used to be available as well for this field - it has been removed, as it caused users to think that this actually meant "all document file types that exist".
Set this to the type of image library you have on your server (must be either GD1, GD2 or ImageMagick). GD2 is the recommended setting.
If you are using GD 1.x and the colors of your thumbnails or intermediate image do not display properly, then, chances are, you actually have GD2 on your server - switch this option to GD 2.x
More recent distributions of PHP come pre-packaged with GD - if you're not sure what you have, set this option to GD2. You can also look at your PHP settings by pointing your browser to the phpinfo.php file in your gallery. eg, http://www.yourgallery.com/your_cpg_folder/phpinfo.php. For more information on using PHP click on this link: phpinfo.
If you intend using ImageMagick convert utility to resize you picture, you must enter the name of the directory where the convert program is located in this line. Don't forget the trailing "/" to close the path. This path must only indicate the directory where the convert utility is located, it should not point directly to the convert utility.
If your server is running under Windows, use / and not \ to separate components of the path (eg. use C:/ImageMagick/ and not C:\ImageMagick\). This path must not contain any spaces under Windows so that it will not put ImageMagick in the "Program files" directory.
ImageMagick will not work properly if PHP on your server is running in SAFE mode and it is a real challenge to get it running under Windows. Please consider using GD in these cases and don't waste your time asking for suppor